The Governor’s Council has gone through many different names, structures, responsibilities, and amounts of power throughout its history. With the founding of Boston and the Massachusetts Bay Colony receiving its first charter (1629), the colony’s governance included the establishment of a “council of assistants,” who were elected by the colony’s freemen. This group was a body of magistrates who not only decided judicial cases, but also played a role in the colony’s lawmaking.

Among its early members was Isaac Royall, Jr., reputedly the largest slave owner in Massachusetts whose family wealth was derived from his father’s slave-based plantation in Antigua.  The younger Royall also bought property and people for his own Antigua plantation.  A member of the council from 1752 to 1774, he is perhaps best known today for providing the seed money for Harvard Law School, whose official seal was modeled on the Royal family crest.  The law school removed the crest following student protest in 2016.  His legacy is now preserved, along with a record of the family’s slave owning, in the Royall House and Slave Quarters Museum in Medford.

In 1684, after the revocation of the colony’s original charter, the Dominion of New England was put in place from 1686 to 1689. That was succeeded by the Province of Massachusetts Bay, whose 1691 charter called for “eight and twenty assistants, or counsellors, to be advising and assisting to the governor.” This group was chosen annually by the Great and General Court (i.e., state legislature) and was to assume the duties of the governor in the absence of both the royal governor and lieutenant governor, both appointed by the crown. It also had the authority over approving and accepting officer’s commissions in the militia. During this provincial period, the relationship between the governor and the council was often strained because the council represented the interests of the colonies which diverged from the crown interests of the governor.

The Massachusetts Charter of 1691, unlike the charter for the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, stripped the power of judicial ruling from the Council, giving it the authority to “advise and consent” but no longer to hear appeals. Instead, appeals were to be administered by the local courts. Any suit that was of a significant sum was then moved to the King’s Privy Council. Other appointments were also taken from the Council and given to the authority of the General Court. However, during the American Revolution, the state government operated under the Massachusetts Charter of 1691, but did so without a governor. Instead, the Council acted as the executive.

During the years before 1766, the Council largely supported British governors. But in the 1770s, as Crown tax policies became more punitive of local merchants and ship owners, Council members began to side with patriots like Sam Adams in the General Court. In this revolutionary period the Council vigorously opposed, for instance, the occupation of Boston by British troops ordered by the Crown, as well as any enforcement of the Stamp Tax act.

During the American Revolution the Governor’s Council was no longer a rubber stamp on the royal governor’s orders. In the 1770s, after the royal governor fled New England and the American Revolution got under way, the Council was instead briefly pivotal in leading Massachusetts into democracy and independence. In the late 1770s during the Revolution, the Council in fact acted as the Bay Colony’s executive branch of government.

With the Revolution won, Massachusetts enacted a state constitution, the basis for the bicameral state government which we still have today. It included a House of Representatives and a state Senate. The Commonwealth’s Senate took over many of the legislative functions carried out by the Governor’s Council in pre-Revolutionary days.

Originally, the Massachusetts Constitution placed the Governor’s Council in the line of executive succession. If the offices of Governor and Lieutenant Governor were both vacant, the Council would act as chief executive. During the colonial period, this happened three times; however, following statehood, it occurred only once. The constitutional line of succession was amended in 1918 to remove the Council and insert the Secretary of the Commonwealth, Attorney General, Treasurer, and Auditor, in that order.

Today, the Governor’s Council, still also known as the Executive Council, is composed of eight individuals, elected from their districts (each consisting of five state senate districts) every two years, and the Lieutenant Governor, who serves ex officio. Residency in the district is not a requirement. Until 1854, the Council membership was nominated by the state House of Representatives and elected by the state Senate. At that time, at the prompting of the American Party (Know Nothings), the state constitution was changed to make the Council an elected position open to all state residents.

Should a seat on the Council become vacant, the General Court may, by concurrent vote, select a person from the relevant councilor district to fill the opening. If the General Court is not in session, the Governor may select the new councilor, with the advice and consent of the existing Council.